Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback The Flaws of Divinity: Original Sin II

After a great deal of hours put into Divinity: Original Sin II and extensive observation of its underlying mechanics and design elements, I've decided to create a comprehensive codex of grievances that I've collected over the course of my playtime.

I've tried codifying my issues with the game in the past in a variety of formats while throwing my two cents in on the forums here and there, but after several iterations I felt that simply recognizing and sharing my observations would be the best starting point for both promoting discussion and solidifying my own criticisms.

You can find the entire document HERE(wordpress) or HERE(gdoc).

A very thorough post. I generally agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I disagree on a few points.



I partly agree about the RNG loot, but I disagree about critical hits. I don't actually pay attention to random % effects on items, those are unreliable, so my eyes don't register that information as important.





I mostly disagree with this point. Cooldown reduction in D:OS 1 contributed to wild imbalances in the game, especially when it came to mages, who could stack points into INT and vastly outclass physical characters spamming a ton of varied attacks. I celebrated the removal of cooldown reduction, which merely made it more difficult to properly balance the game.

I'm quite sure that D:OS 2's EA did not have cooldown reduction as a mechanic.

That said, cooldown reduction under specific circumstances might be interesting. I even suggested a Talent which reduces cooldowns by 1 turn to a minumum of 0 if Warm, Burning, or Necrofire at the start of the turn, and increases cooldowns by 1 turn if Chilled or Frozen at the start of the turn.

I have not seen such a coherent and well thought-out criticism for ANY game before.

I read it all, and I must say that I agree 100% on every single word of what you have written (apart from some stuff in lesser flaws section not worth mentioning). Most importantly

"Larian Studios has not opened a dialogue about or openly respected feedback and criticism.
Larian Studios came forth last year on their forums stating that they would be reading and taking into consideration all criticism and feedback, and would be incorporating it. Come release, and not only were massive complaints of the community, long-standing bugs, and other issues left unaddressed but major, sweeping changes were dropped in the release version with no public testing—People who were so excited about this game they literally paid to help test it were not consulted on out-of-the-blue gut punches like Initiative being effectively removed."

I played DoS:EE just a couple years back, and I really liked it. It was not a Baldur's Gate 2, but it had its own style, and a very interesting and fun combat system, also hybrid characters did not fail, where they most often do in many RPG's, unless you go on a solo powerplay.

I made a One-Hander Tank, Rogue, 2 Casters party for DoS:II and I kind of regret it.

- The armor system's 100% block or 100% let through thing is absolutely ridiculous, MAJOR flaw like you said. There are times I just skip the turns of my mages, because whether I cast something or not will not make any difference in the next 4 turns of the combat. I skip turns waiting for their incredibly long support skill cooldowns end.

- Terrain effects means absolutely nothing, they are way too volatile to plan and utilize, nor do I feel like leaving hazardous terrain since using that AP to break someone else's armor is much more valuable.

- Attributes promote dump statting. Attributes do nothing, you need main skill attribute and memory, and nothing else, the rest are simply dump stats. Attributes should also modify saving throw points, effect chances, AP regens, Cooldowns etc. just like you said, just like in DoS:EE.

- Tanking is also non-existent, taunt is a joke, every "class" has some sort of teleport option that you are not able to tank anyone. Well, time to respec my one hander to a 2 hander.

Anyway I could go on, but I will be pointing to exact same issues you have pointed out, and do a worse job explaning them so I will stop here.

The only tanking in DOS2 is mage face-tanking with bone cage which gives absurd amount of pdef, combining this with natural high mdef for mage and AI's logic "I SEE MAGE I ATTACK MAGE" you get a perfect tank right there.

Taunt is a joke. Even more useless than in DOS1, thats funny.

My gripe with Critical Hits under the RNG point is less about critical hits themselves, but more how out-of-place they are after they've gone through so much effort to remove RNG and savescum elements. I only mention it because exactly that happened to me in a co-op game (the host ate a crit that he would have otherwise survived in the Houndmaster fight, if I remember correctly.)

I'm also not solely reminiscing about D:OS1's cooldown system, simply observing that there was no real attempt to replace it, alter it to better fit these new systems, or otherwise account for it's removal. Spellcasters in D:OS1 could become ridiculous spell-slinging archmages with a few pieces of INT gear and as much fun as that was, it didn't need to reoccur; but I still would have liked something to fill that void.

Great Guardsman, if I can make a suggestion: Make the titles much less aggressive. Avoid overly-negative language in the titles like "broken", "pointless", "a joke", "terrible", "boring". That's the first thing people see, and that's more likely to make the developers less likely to even want to read the paragraphs below, even though thous paragraphs don't contain the negative language.

Just a little suggestion for improving your messaging.

I had intended this less as a tirade for the reflection of the devs and more as a community-oriented piece, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give it a once-over with a bit more professionalism since the devs may see it after all.

Thank you for the input.

At OP. Most of your grievances come from the fact that you consider D:OS 2 a single player game. D:OS 2 can be played single player but it is mainly a multiplayer game where you can screw over your friend's quests and AP is the way it is because you are expected to fight your friends over various stuff like who gets to kill Roost first to progress their quest (Sebile and Ifan rivalry).

I partialy agree that gear with +initiative is a big joke,but to me that is nothing compared to the fact that we still have resistances in this game. I would rather they scrap out resistances and give us back the bonuses to armor from str and int investments as well as the +dodge from finesse.Monsters should either be imune (can't take damage from certain elements) or empowered (they restore health when damaged by a specific element).

Also I would rather RNG a long side green and blue items be removed from the game and that instead we could get more combat and civil points.

It is? I'd always assumed it was aimed at both equally. I think a lot of people's issues with it come from the assumption that it's primarily one or the other, or that it's primarily something else that it isn't necessarily.

I agree with a number of points, but a huge chunk of points don't have any elucidation and are just statements of opinions with no evidence. Eg.

You: "Surfaces are rubbish and do no damage"
Me: nah, it seems fine

Could you inform me of which points or individual examples/explanations seem underdeveloped? (A PM or post is fine.)

I tried to remain as brief as possible with each separate issue, but if that's getting in the way of understanding them then perhaps some alterations can be made to better illustrate them.

I agree with pretty much all of what you wrote. That is a very well done set of critics for sure.

Considering that, even though I do disagree with some very specific things, Larian should most certainly take a look at this.

I do have one major question though, what exactly do you mean with this?

"Risk Management is gone, RNG remains.
Accuracy, Ability Success, and Saving Throws are either gone or redundant now. Despite this, RNG elements still plague the game with Critical Hits, randomly generated gear and loot, and various random % effects on generated equipment, amongst other examples. There is no element of chance one can strategize around, but plenty of dice rolled."


This whole paragraph is very confusing and isn't quite clear, for a few reasons.

1 - Yes, risk management is gone, but less RNG has nothing to do with that, if anything no RNG means less risk to manage because there are less variables.

2 - RNG on combat and outside of combat are 2 completely different issues, split those up, maybe.

3 - At the same time you state RNG still "plague"s the game, there is a complaint that there is "no element of chance one can strategize around". While I agree that there is little to no element of strategy on the game's current combat, I strongly disagree that it is in any way related to the level of RNG (X-COM has several degrees more of RNG than Divinity does and saying the former has less elements to strategize around is laughable).


So in conclusion, do you mean that you want more RNG elements and the return of accuracy and saving throws (I doubt Larian would ever do this considering the direction the game was taken on), or do you mean that you want the ones that are currently there to be removed?

Personally I think that this is mainly a complaint about a collateral effect, and not a problem in itself. If the low ammount of RNG that is in the game right now was removed the game would be even more of a cakewalk, that is just not the problem. The real problem, is that there is nothing to strategize around, there is always a very clear best strategy without any real risk to it.


As for the loot, I don't think anyone really disagrees that it is currently one of the weakest parts of the game.

The general idea behind that statement was, as I alluded to in another reply, was that they went through extensive effort to remove chance-based and savescum mechanics and systems from the game or to isolate and nullify their impact in anything but fringe cases-- Yet there still remained a lot of systems, some of them poorly implemented or unchanged, that still fell under that scope.

You had it right on the head with that last paragraph, the RNG aspects of the game have been wholly seperated from any sort of strategist or risk; the central gameplay elements are deterministic but are still flanked by random chance at every turn.

I may split that point into two seperate ones, or re-write it completely.

It may be confusing, since it can lead to the false impression that RNG is to blame for a lack of strategical options, which doesn't make too much sense (If anything there are more games proving the oposite, but both ways can work). Splitting/rewritting might be the way to go, focusing on that part about a lack of strategic options.

Now I just hope this ends up being read by Larian at some point in the future

Great job mate.

Hey, GreatGuardsman!

This is gold for me, thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I'll bookmark this for my project and try to tackle some of the issues, at least that I agree with, fits my campaign overhaul/expansion's theme and is doable by a modder.

For the rest, hopefully Larian addresses some of the points in future patches!

Cheers!

I've made the following changes to the document:

• Reworded the Risk Management Major Issue and split it into two parts.
• Adjusted some of the harsher language ('a joke', 'absolutely terrible', etc) according to community feedback.
• Minor spelling/format/grammar fixes

I'm glad to hear so many people are finding my observations interesting or are taking these points and running with them!
I look forward to the community's future efforts and how D:OS2 will continue to grow after its launch; knowing that I might've helped spur the right changes onwards has made this whole idea worthwhile.

There are some stats which make green and blue items no better than white items such as +x intiative, +x crit chance rate (x is always smaller than 5), +random number hp +x% dodging (if Finesse would still give a bonus to dodging then maybe this would not be so bad) +z movement speed (where z is smaller than 1 i.e 0.75) and my personal favorites +x to random civil ability I don't need (seriously I hate this last one,can't we get more civil points instead,please Larian)

If these stats were removed from the RNG machine then maybe things could get better.



This game is a multiplayer one because you can play it with friends,Larian's goal in the kickstarter was to make a game which can be played with friends, competitive questing is an experimental thing meant to make the game more fun by having friends compete for quest completion.That is my understanding of what D:OS2 is at least.

While I can respect the efforts of the op to provide this insight,I believe as a community we should keep in mind that this game was desinged to be a social activity shared with friends,not another single player where you can play a power fantasy. Larian would most likely ignore us if we keep treating the game like a single player experience so things like the limited AP is not a problem,it's a feature that isn't going anywhere.

Nice reading. I agree with most of your points. Specially:


I spent many time trying to prepare the terrain for one battle. It was a waste of time & effort. I almost cry when the enemy casted cursed terrain and destroyed all my surfaces so easily.


This is even more infuriating. Ranged enemies are able of doing "imposible" shoots. Sometimes it seems like their arrows can even go through the floor and other solid objects.


Useful ingredients are expensive and/or difficult to find. Even trying to find A SIMPLE EMPTY BOTTLE requires A LOT of time exploring the map. It's really frustrating to see you have spent a lot of hours in the game, you have tons of 'crafting' materials cluttering your inventory, but still you are not capable of crafting 2 or 3 relevant items.


To me, there is little to none sense of reward from cooking. The benefits from eating dishes are too small, considering the difficulty involved in obtaining those ingredients.

Sorry for my english.

As discussed elsewhere, their intent was to make a game that can be played with friends, but it doesn't follow that was its main intent. The game is clearly targeted at both single- and multi-player campaigns equally, and though I can't speak for anyone else, I wouldn't have backed it if it was designed and sold as being multiplayer with a kinda sorta single-player option tacked on. Though I suspect nor would a great many other people who now enjoy playing it SP.

Being brief is the issue, lot of them are just headlines and one paragraph. I'd have to write an essay on everything wrong with it, before I could even begin to discuss what was being agreed on.

The first one boils down to "the system isn't the old one" there's no indication of what you want or why it'd be better.

It sounds like you want the opportunity to have more rounds than others, which sounds really bad and dumb.

That's not the biggest issue.

If Larian wants to switch to Round Robin to maintain a challenging experience, fine, but that has gutted the Wits attribute and made the Initiative affix on items useless.

But this isn't true, going before the enemy is valuable, but it depreciates as rounds go on and you need good openings to capitalise on starting first. But going first has undeniable benefits and saying it doesn't is just nonsense.

Wits helps with crit rate, so it's not useless unless you're a mage without savage sortilage (the magic crit talent).

But what is the problem? The text doesn't actually say and I have no clue what the issue is from the text. All there is, is nonsense hyperbole.

My point there (and it stands), was that RNG specifically is not to blame there. The implementation might be.

Those stats you hate on items, for example, are not the problem itself, but rather a consequence of how streamlined stats are, removing them would only serve the purpose of streamlining them further.

The point of itemization is not giving you better items, shit items should absolutely exist. The problem is that, at least currently, nothing really stands out.

No, one person gets to go first. Wits is irrelevant to going first on every other party member. Even then I would argue that a single enemy going first is not super-important because only one enemy is going first. So I don't really agree that Wits is terribly important in terms of turn order.

Wits helps with crit rate, but that only starts to be a better investment than raw STR/INT/FIN after one of those is at 40. It's only second place because there's not really anything else to invest in.

So I completely disagree that Wits is in a good place or that Initiative is a useful random affix on items.

I agree with Stabbey. Wits just doesn't seem to matter until the very very late game when other stats are capped out. Even then, you get your crit in much larger groups from so many other places, I generally put it in Con until I have enough to make a difference in crit (10% is about right).

Even with high wits and something like Peace of Mind for a big bonus, a lot of bosses seem protected by plot-initiative where they just get to go first, so it's an even bigger meh.

Factor in a primary stat is worth 5% damage and 1% more crit is effectively 1% more damage (outside of 2h builds) and it's just a disappointing stat. Doesn't ruin the game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's constructive criticism and feedback to provide IMO.

Incredibly good post OP, it's not often I find myself agreeing with most, if not all points someone makes. Especially in this kind of scale. So hats off, it was a good read, and I hope someone from Larian takes it into account.

Reading through the OP (which is very well written IMO) I had more feedback. I really enjoy these discussions.

Systematic Flaws
1. Initiative
Systematic is the right word here. It doesn't feel terrible, and personally I'm ok with it. I don't really have a dog in this fight. As Stabbey said, /shrug, but it makes Wits worthless. Then again, in EE, wits just felt like a stat tax to ensure all my guys weren't going dead last. So I'm not sure I liked that any more. It wasn't fun or interesting to invest in Wits.

2. Armor System
Agree, I provided similar feedback in EE. Everyone seems to have an opinion on how to fix it, but my only feedback is I agree it needs something.

3. Scaling
This is turning into the biggest one. Farming merchants is just tedious. I was so excited when I got Lohar's hammer in act 2, and sold it less than an hour later. One level made it so weak I haven't felt excited about loot since. It's all so ... temporary.

4. Random Loot Generation
The nonsensical part has always bothered me, but games like D3/Torchlight/Borderlands have taught me this is a lost cause. Whatever developers see in it, it's beyond my understanding.

5. Character Building
I mentioned this in my review also, but it feels like your first points are so interesting and fun and crucial. After that, you just kind of invest in the same thing for the rest of the game (Civil Abilities), or with tiny, tiny variances to grab must-haves (2 Aerothurge for instance). Otherwise, leveling up is more of a mental groan where I go re-farm merchants.

6. UI
I don't think anyone would argue the auto-adding is a PITA and unwanted.

7. The Ap System.
I disagree the AP system is painfully restricted. I feel like the flow is much better captured now in terms of weak-moderate cost abilities. I can watch the enemy make its moves and mentally tally the AP they've used or saved so far. And going back to DOS1, I was struck at how clunky the AP costs lined up in terms of planning out my turns. All in all, I feel like the AP system is a big step forward in their design. If I had one complaint, it's that the 3 point abilities just don't feel worthwhile (outside of Elemental Affinity to use them), or that some abilities just don't feel useful, but that's a whole other discussion. In terms of AP system, I like that it's fixed and I'm not always out hunting for the king of all resources - AP. It's as static as a turn in Chess or X-COM, and the enemy faces the same restraints.

Conversely, letting me up my AP presents new encounter challenges. Either they scale enemies to likewise get more AP in their own ways, thus making my AP a wash, and punishing casual players who don't min/max for the stat. Or, they leave the enemy AP the same, and trivialize the play for me (see DOS1). It's a coldwar resource and leaving it static is smart design, IMO.

Major Flaws
1. AI is riddled with issue.
Not sure I can fully agree with "The AI is riddled with issues." In EE, the problem was the exact opposite. Opportunist, Shackles of Pain, and using terrain to trap enemies was pointless. They were Neo-In-Matrix in their counterplay. Now I will agree that sometimes it feels absurd (they legit will kill themselves, ruining any step 2 to their plan), but those instances are rare enough where I feel the AI is at least in a better place (i.e. willing to punish their shackled comrade if they have more HP than me). To call it a major flaw feels like an exaggeration. It could be improved. It doesn't feel major, so it distracts from some of your better points.

2. Source as a mechanic
Mostly agree. If it just recharged itself after a fight, I wouldn't care. Making me go farm corpses is ... tedious. From an RPG standpoint, I agree it feels cool though.

3. Combat Skill/Ability balance
Again, some abilities can be improved, but this doesn't feel major. You started out pretty level in your writing, and have slid into a kind of hyperbole at this point. "absolute joke" seems a bit much. Some can be built around, some need re-balancing, and some feel good as a benchmark. That's pretty solid. I'm sure they're aware enough of it (considering their patching so far) that this doesn't need to be stressed under "major flaws" and "absolute joke." More like "could use tuning" and "some feel underwhelming."

4. Tactician Mode
I can't really say, I've only played TM outside of EE. I'm told it's just a lot more HPs, with I'm ok with. The AI seems smart, and not being able to always insta-gib an opponent feels like a tactical challenge to me, i.e. tactician mode. If I had complaints here, it would be that DOS2 suffers from what most TBS games suffer from in their later acts. Act 1 felt ok, but by late act 2, I feel like I can curb stomp anything in non-boss fights. It reminds me a lot of X-COM in that if you survive the early parts, you win. I don't have a useful solution to provide, but that's my feedback on it.

5. Aesthetic Control
I was about to write "major issue?" again, but I can see how some people might consider this big. I'll say it doesn't matter as much to me, but that it almost ties back to the gear grind issue you mentioned earlier. Even if I found/made a slick set-up, it'd be farmed out in an hour or so.

Hmm I shoudl actually do work at work. That's my feedback so far though Nice write-up, and thanks for taking the time to put it together and get a discussion going on it.

There is one major problem with this statement and the comparison with X-Com.

In X-Com you will only have a cakewalk in the lategame if you never lost a battle (or lost a very low number of them), which is not a reality unless you are very good at the game or save scum (I'm not considering lower difficulties here, it's intentional). And this is realistic on that setting, admit it or not, a war WILL be easy if you're not losing battles.

The problem with the comparison is: On Divinity you can't fail, there is no scenario where your best soldier will die permanently and/or you will lose items or progress. Which in turn means things need to be balanced in different ways.

On X-Com you can actually feel the increase in difficulty if you go there, because stat bloat is not the focus of it (it exists, but is not the focus), on Divinity, at least currently, at most you're getting longer fights.

In conclusion, a higher difficulty just increasing enemy stats is bad (plenty of examples to go around, Bethesda games are often a victim of bad difficulty scaling). Increasing the enemy stats being only one of the aspects of difficulty scaling is already a major improvement.

Guys, it's a 6/10, maybe a 7 at a push



Wits, as a stat, is a minor investment for most people, if at all. It's useful. I want to put 5 points in it for everyone on my team, but that's it and it's low priority.

I could see that being perceived as a problem, but the stat isn't meant to be maxed (typically), but getting 30% crit chance and +30 init. I can really seeing that being built around and being tactically useful. Put it on a 2h warrior, a hunter or an offensive wizard. Add hotheaded and unload the nukes, seems legit to me.

I don't know if I really benefit from +30 init, or if 10 would be enough for most encounters. I want the bonus to detection on my rogue, rather than my warrior, but that's okay.

Starting first in combat is huge, especially if you can capitalise on it and wits seems good for that.

You just played yourself, that is the issue.

Currently there are always very clear optimal stat allocation options. Stats aren't meant to be maxed (typically) but, in Divinity 2 if you're trying to be effective, they are.

Just so that you can realise the problem in the argument you are trying to covey, start a game with high loremaster and make sure to always "examine" enemies to know their "wits" and "initiative", you will quickly notice that most enemies have both stats set to very low, with very rare exceptions where you're not likely to play before them unless your build is very sub-optimal anyway (The Advocate comes to mind).

I won't put any effort into explaining why wits is not worth the investment for "critical chance" specifically because that is a mathematical error, anyone with a calculator can prove it wrong. There is an argument to be made for initiative but other problems currently in the game prevent it from being anywhere near the best investment.

The only point in the game where it is worth the investment is on Act 4, where enemies actually have higher initiative, but at that point the relevant stat (STR, FIN, INT) is already at max.

I just wanted to say to OP that I almost entirely agree with all the points on the document. While my view may differ on some points, such as the AP system, I found myself surprised with just how many significant and distinct issues I have with the game. It's why I came searching on the forums in the first place. Partially to theorycraft, but also to gauge what others thought about it.

I still love the game, but after just one play-through I already am wanting to slap on mods, correct issues, and pray for a community patch. As I read through forum posts, I realize just how much there seems to be. Perhaps I missed this with the old game, or I am more observant now, or there really is just more that arguably needs fixing. The simplification of so many attributes and talents (that become rather useless), how unimportant initiative is, or the loremaster all enemies seem to have, or the stat bloating and the randomness and lack of significant items, etc. It kind of astounds many mechanics were changed/nerfed at release and while I am happy to have a game that I still want to playthrough multiple times, even as is, I would have been willing to wait a bit longer.

Anywho, having finally had a place to voice that, thanks for creating that post, OP. Both for nailing down the issues and opening it to discussion. I'm getting inspired to see if I can't get involved to help create suggestions or even create workshop style fixes for some of the issues (despite it sadly disabling achievements, even if I just want my hotbar to not be cluttered)

Well no, because my original point is that the point made made no effort to explain itself. Not that it was wrong, but all it presented was hyperbole, number of other points are similar, they aren't well written and don't explain the issue.

I remade a wizard (level 14) so they have roughly 20/20 int and wits. They're looking fine, 30% spell crit seems alright. Opening with potent aoe is strong. Hasn't lost notable damage, don't know how it'll work out in the long run, will find out .

I can see problems with wit / initiative, but they're not as pronounced as the op makes out. Even if wits doesn't work as a main stat, it doesn't have to. You wouldn't put massive points into wisdom, you don't need to put all your points in the damage stat.

Unfortunatelly you're missing the point of the critic itself.

CAN you play by investing in wits? Absolutly yes.

Will it come even close in power as someone who is not? Absolutely not.

The post was not made to point out how you should play. Invest in whatever you like, put all your points in constitution and no will will bat an eye.

The issue is, if you're doing something that is blatantly sub-par because you have fun with it that has no place in a conversation about balance (unless you're argueing that even though it is unbalanced, it is fun, there is a case to be made there sometimes, not on this particular one though (I think(?))).

OP's post is very clear about this particular issue - the game completely discourages any strategy that deviates from a particular path, there is an obvious stronger choice.

Do a quick test (like several people have already done before) - save right before any particular fight (once for every level/power spike if you want precise results) and then respec before doing those fights, testing builds. The difference is massive when stats are properly alocated.

By the way, no one ever said wits should be the main stat (other than your mention of it of course). It might not even be that bad of a stat (and only be a collateral effect) if other things got fixed (less streamlined stats, different initiative system, etc.).



If what you don't like is just the way he worded things, perhaps sending a suggestion of what you consider a better version of a paragraph is a smarter way forward. He did ask for it a few times, it should be very helpful.

It would be nice if after drinking a bottle of water/wine would give you the bottle afterwards.

I'm glad that there's so much discussion cropping up in this thread; even if there isn't a complete consensus on any given topic, we can still refine our arguments and better share our experiences with the game and our perspectives on any given flaw or design choice. I've been a little busy as of late, but I'm definitely keeping my eyes peeled for suggestions and criticisms.

The only thing I'd like to clarify is that the Systemic/Major/Lesser categorization is less about showing the importance of an issue and more about describing its impact on the overall design and experience, and its relation to other flaws/design choices. A systemic issue is one that has deep and numerous effects throughout the game, a major issue is closely tied to other issues or has a noticeable presence in the game, and a lesser issue is a relatively independent problem or underdeveloped aspect of the game.
This categorization is also the most subjective feature of the document, but I felt it was a good alternative than trying to objectively categorize the importance of every issue, as opposed to trying to judge its overall impact.

to whoever said the A.I face the same restraint. Sorry you're absolutely WRONG.

Get one of your character to get loremaster 5, you will see that EVERY A.I on Tactician has 6 AP w/o glass cannon after the first act.

It's like every enemy i see is a Lone Wolf in disguise, and they still get beaten like a pup. So yeah, Larian clearly nail themselves this part.

Yes, this totally annoyed my already in the first. I kind of forgot about it, because I hardly played the second game so far. But yes, they really should fix this shit.

No you don't get it

I understand power gaming works.

What I don't see, is a case why it matters, or why things should change.

If the design document for classic mode states: "any 4 chucklefucks can beat the game as long as they have a modicum of intelligence". Then what needs to change.

There's no context for issues, no solutions, no consideration for working as intended.

If I understood half the points being made and could understand them, I would suggest better wording. As it stands,I can't fully comprehend the first one

Your views differ and that's fine, but reading through your posts I feel like you are not fully considering what is being said. Your initial posts about the list say that the points made are unclear and uneducated. I would disagree as all of the them made perfect sense to me as they were issues I experienced while playing. You pointed out surfaces and, while it's not a massive issue, they seem negligible. You don't get crazy fire + poison combos like the original game, and late game, save for oil and spike traps (and holy fire as an undead) their damage is barely worth considering.

In addition, I'm worried this won't stay civil because you don't seem to be considering other arguments. In this case I am talking about your argument with the initiative system. People are saying it's broken because typically initiative is not round robin, it simply is descending order of initiative. But in the case of this game it is reduced to round-robin, save for the one person that goes first. To quote the wiki, "if your 4-man party of allies has an initiative of 44, 43, 42 and 41 respectively, meeting a 4-man group of enemies with an initiative of 4, 3, 2, 1 respectively... the order of taken actions would be: A44, E4, A43, E3, A42, E2, A41, E1."

There is the argument that it's working as intended, but if we step back from that, does it really seem proper that the ally initiative scores shouldn't all be going before the enemy considering they are all at least 10x as great? As for the wits stat? Well I actually agree with you for the most part, however I would say that it could afford to have some more clear advantage as one of the six primary stats.

Finally, you keep insulting OP and his document. As I already said, I think it is clear he put some time and educated thought into the document. Yes, he didn't write a persuasive essay for every point, but that's because most points can be understood by experienced players with just the first line. The other reason I imagine he left it short is so that such a long list is an easy read and will leave room for discussion. He did not propose solutions because I think he would rather we break down the points in here and propose solutions, with the hope that Larian would notice when many people are proposing similar solutions, as opposed to one guy claiming he can fix everything.

I simply ask that you try and give the arguments true consideration. These issues were rather obvious to me, perhaps because of all the time I spent in EA and in the original game. You have made some good counter arguments, while some of your other posts didn't demonstrate more than a glancing attempt to demonstrate the issue, consider the intention, and propose a solution. For example, your last post said "If I understood half the points being made and could understand them, I would suggest better wording. As it stands,I can't fully comprehend the first one."

@Igniz13 You keep, for some reason, misinterpreting what people are defending.

I never once mentioned power gaming, I don't know where you got that from. What I stated is that there is no liberty for strategical thinking on character builds. Also what the OP said by the way.


As for your constant insults to the document itself, as I said on the last post: rewrite what you think is confusing in a better way and I'm sure the author will take note of it. He specifically asked for it on previous posts. Doing exactly what you're criticizing might not be the best way to convey your message.

Once again, I'm glad there could be some discussion about the document and what it entails, and that content creators in the community have taken notice of it.

Currently I'm working on my own modding goals, trying to feel out what exactly is possible in the realm of new abilities and status effects and the feasibility of a full Ability overhaul from the ground up; however I'm not able to do this all of the time, and have plenty of time to think and write.
I've been debating writing up a guide on the topic of Encounter Building for future campaign creators (speaking primarily from experience in other settings like tabletop and modding), but I'm open to suggestions if there's any topics I or the community have brought up that you all would like to see me expand upon.

I'm interested in how to step into modding the game. Haven't done much in the way of mod creation so I don't know where to start with this game. Less in the field of creating new encounters or quests, and more in the realm of tweaking the base game. Such as mods that add a source fountain to the Lady Vengeance, or change how many points you get every level, or reduce health bloating, etc.

I just want to find a way to add more/change effects given by stats such as combat skills or attributes, since those are the main culprits for the massive imbalance in the game, and let's not forget how uninteresting they are.

Already made a thread , but no bites yet.

I don't mind stream lined RNG itemization as long as the RNG algorythm is done right. The stats I hate the most should be exlusive to Greens or removed all toghether.Blue should have 2 bits of the good stats and with the generosity of RNG one rune slot. Purple should give either more of the good stats from blue or the same stats but at the advantage of 2 rune slots.Purple shouldn't be a thing and Orange is....in an ok place I guess....some of them feel like Greens to be honest....like Garrick's boots.

In this game with low wealth and encounters it stands to reason that most of your gear should be generic (white) unless you manage to rob a barack belonging to either black ring or the magisters clean of any quality piece of loot. But what ends up happening is that you cycle through greens and blues just because you are psychologicaly manipulated to keep them because they are better because they have stats instead of just going for the white's and give the middle finger to blue's and green's until the purple stuff pops out....and in most cases blue does indeed trump whites....unless they get green worthy stats.

Also while I am at it I will like to contest some flaws,namely numbers 7,8,10.

Contesting 7:

For me terrain continues to play a part in my how I strategize my battles. I am currently playing a party of 4 lead by my custom avatar,a battlemage clad in plate armor that brings elemental havoc from his staff in close quaters combat, Ifan the Wayfarer, Sebile the Master Assasin (warfare scoundrel hybrid) and Fane the healer.

My battlemage (his name is Jack by the way) and Sebile,get very upset at Ifan and Fane when the later casts Blood Rain because Ifan ran out of water grenades and water arrows while he is engaged in melee combat because his shocking touch can electrify both the target and the blood,which can in turn electrify Jack if his feet is touching the blood.

The reason why Jack and Sebile are annoyed at this because the damage of the electrified surface is increased based on Jack's stats and that can screw up both their magic armour,leaving them vulnerable to lots of bs from the enemy casters.

Contesting 8:

Summoning is meant as a support class for single element mages. Summoners could also dip a few points in random elemental classes to get that classes summon + the requirements to craft infusions for their incarnates.

Contesting 10:

Ow GreatGuardsman, do you remember last century when I argued with the whole community that the AP was meant to be restrictive because of the multiplayer aspect of this game,where if you want you can get a friend and compete with him for completing quests. Well this ties right into that...if you could apply the amount of CC you could in D:OS 1 in any of the modes available in D:OS 2 would you argue that would be any fun for the guy on the receiveing end of that shockingly chained AoE CC.

A fun story about stealth in D:OS 2

Also just for fun I would like to mention an instance where I broke a boss fight with the stealth mechanic. So I was in Blackpits fighting Aetera.She started first and wiped my party.4 reloads later I got the bright ideea to focus all of my atention on keeping Sebile's armor as high as possible,because she had 2 in sneak (just from gear),because he had 6 in thievery (I steal that much!) and she also had Chameleon Cloak and Cloak and Dagger.

I let my party members die and tryed to kill as many blue wolves as possible in the process. In the meanwhile Sebile managed to escape the shit storm that took a lot of hours out of my live and managed to sneak back to the boss fight area and stealthly managed to revive the whole team on her own.

With the mobs still spawned I drew agro with Jack and Fane,while Sebile and Ifan were in stealth and walking to the oposite where Jack and Fane were, towards Aetera. All the wolves surrounded Jack who was bashing heads with his mighty overchared elemental staff,while Fane was cowering behind his shield and throwing ocasional heals and time bubbles at Jack.

While the party with the wolves was hard and heavy, Sebile jumped first on Aetera for a bloody 1 on 1 rematch, while Ifan was busy calling his soul wolf in order to change Sebile's steamy reunion into a masacre of epic proportion,where physical armor got shreded in 1 turn by claw,dagger and arrow....meanwhile Jack ace'd the wolves.

To clarify a few things, namely in regards to my last post: I did not mean to come off as an experienced modder; my expertise here is largely in design itself, I'm having to teach myself from scratch just like the rest of you (the majority of my recent experience coming from XCOM2/Skyrim, with some hazy memories of Doom/Quake mapping and working with eAthena).
If there's any topics pertinent to the aspects of outlining and designing content, that's the kind of thing I'm probably going to be most able to provide insight on.

@Draco359
On 7: I'm not saying that Terrain and Traps aren't nonfunctional, I'm saying they're significantly robbed of impact and strategic importance with how little they do in terms of scaling and application. Standing in electrified blood when you've got no MA left is still going to stun you-- It's the fact that it's so easy to ignore terrain effects and how difficult it is to make consistent use of them that I take issue with.

On 8: I think you're missing the point. Summoning is an interesting choice and a welcome addition, but there's a few issues with it's implementation (along with complimentary issues with how summoning in general is handled): Notable among these are that non-Summoners can't invest in their summons without sparing points for Summoning, that Summoning's scaling is out of whack, and that non-Summoning summons scale even more ridiculously because they try to compete with Summoning.

On 10: I'm not solely referring to CCs/stuns in this point; in fact I'm largely referring to the vast number of utility, damage, and buff/debuff-oriented abilities that are either irrelevant or weak and overshadowed by more directly impactful effects. Effects like Bleed, Blind, Chilled, etc are really underrepresented for a variety of reasons, and they could do with reason to shine; but what basically inspired this point was Flay Skin.
On a relevant note, I'm not calling solely for the previous AP system; simply pointing out that the removal of AP Management was a void that hadn't been filled in the mechanics, and that our current scale and implementation of AP is too tight and underwhelming (this is especially reflected in AP costs).

I largely agree with the list as well – and I hope someone from Larian takes note, though I highly doubt I’ll play through a game this huge again, unless there was some major overhaul.

Having finally finished, though, I can chip in with a few words myself.

-- MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW --

To start with the positive, this game very nearly is a masterpiece that’s chiefly let down by a rushed Act 3, weak characterisations and an over ambitious agenda that could have benefited from shedding some of its larger promises that it obviously couldn’t uniformly deliver in the time it was given.

The visuals are easily the best I’ve seen in any game. And here I don’t mean the technical bells and whistles, which are no doubt excellent in themselves, but specifically the art direction. The storytelling, hugely improved over D:OS 1, can’t live up to the imagination that went into the environments, or the creature design. Take the Harbinger of Doom that stops on occasion to neurotically chew on its own arm – this is a vividly wretched creation that sticks out in memory. And the kraken is, I think, the most original, and convincingly warped invention since Giger’s mind-bending human-machine hybrids – it definitely needed more show time than it was given.

There’s an expanse of thousands of candles the quietly opens up in a demon’s lair that was so simple, evocative and well-played that it trumped the entire narrative efforts of Act 3 combined. The timing of the lashes of rain during what is, for me anyway, the game’s second best battle – The Drillworm and Alexander – makes for some great visual drama.

I could go on about the visuals – but long story short, the artists are doing their job, and doing it better than most.

Narrative-wise, the game starts strong, and is infinitely improved over the goofery and cartoonishness that made D:OS 1’s story seem so slight and forgettable. But the foundation starts to tremble somewhere during Act 2 – and by Act 3, it has completely lost the plot, almost as though the writers suffered some kind of artistic crisis and couldn’t pull it all together at the last minute.

Characters like Dallis, Alexander and the mysterious ‘Cloaked Figure’ disappear for massive stretches, only to show up so abruptly that they might be characters from another game. Somehow, Braccus Rex is unmasked as the main antagonist during the daftly unbalanced final battle. Didn’t he die in the first game? Never mind: I don’t want to know the hokum that’s shoehorned in to make this plot twist viable. He’s fighting alongside another character who’s also had no development (read: appears as a relatable person, with lines of dialogue) whatsoever throughout the game. I’m talking, here, about Lucian the Something, who I think had a few waypoint statues made in his honour, and was mentioned fleetingly in dialogues here and there.

Because these characters scarcely appear in the scenarios leading to the climax, there’s no investment on the part of the player. No big payoff in watching them live or die through what follows.
The weak characterisation is problematic across the board, however. In a story full of largely well-written, if underdeveloped, female characters, all of the males, bar Ifan, get the short end of the narrative stick, and end up snarling lines like the zingers our man Braccus flings at Lucian – ‘you babbling buffoon!’. It schlocky stuff, I’m afraid, and there’s a lot of it.

There’s no Jon Irenicus or Master Mirror from The Witcher 3 that the game badly needs to give it some edge in the villain department.

Act 1 is, for me, the strongest part of the game, with a sturdy if somewhat bloated Act 2 following close behind. Ultimately it’s the slapdash Act 3 that lets the game down the most. Everything about it seems hurried. There are technical slowdowns witnessed nowhere else in the game that tell a story of developers who didn’t have enough time to optimise code. There are paintings that actually have the name ‘placeholder’.

There’s a passable fantasy city, full of a couple of named merchants and dozens upon dozens of anonymous ‘cizilian this’ and ‘paladin that’ types. The village areas of Driftwood and Fort Joy had more personality and life. They were more organic, more lived in – more populated with people than walking placeholders. The quests in Arx are maddeningly designed, culminating in a pipe puzzle that makes you wonder what on earth the designers were smoking at this point.

The game becomes the equivalent of that really great, nearly five star movie that gets four stars because it was ‘30min too long’. Except here that 30min is exploded tenfold into hours upon hours of messy, badly designed Act 3 quests that pale in comparison to the quests that preceded them. I would have been happy if they’d just ditched Arx completely, took its best elements and turned them into an epic final few hours that consisted of 10% of the time you otherwise have to waste in Arx.

The best battles in the game are the ones where randomness was allowed to create its own drama. The highlight for me is still the brilliant Blackpits oil field battle with the slugs. It just so happens to be the best fight I’ve ever played in a game. Simply genius design, full of deviously unexpected moments. The rest of the game’s battles are unfortunately the same thing over and over. The same number of enemies, the same enemy types reskinned to look like monsters but that are really just variations of the standard classes you’ll encounter throughout the rest of the game.

If only they’d thought of more enemies like the revenants that respawn in cursed fire (although some of these, with infinite cursed arrows, are clearly broken). Now that’s what adds tactics to the game, not inflated HP and armour bars.

The boring tactician mode could really benefit from the few more randomised encounters seen elsewhere but are sadly limited in number.

Level progression also becomes a problem, when nothing ever really changes, bar the health bars. The same set of skills used in Act 1 will still be used in Act 3, alongside ridiculously overpowered ‘source skills’ that really should just belong to a few boss type enemies and not be available to the player. The problem is that the base skills don’t evolve beyond damage boosts and the like, so very little seems to change, beyond the length of time it takes to end a fight.

The environmental eruptions of poison, ice, fire and so on, once one of the great innovations of the game, degenerate later on into cursed variations (inevitably cursed fire) that are immune to the more interesting clean ups and mutations available to their earthly counterparts. It’s either tornado or bless, which is dull and limited and the very opposite of what this mechanic offered in D:OS 1.

All of that being said, it still manages to be a fantastic game. The visual artwork, in particular, is exceptional. The story, though flawed, is far better than that of most other games, and the writing, though occasionally hockey, is nonetheless solid enough that it never completely embarrasses itself. The actors appear to enjoy delivering their lines, at least in Act 1, where the writing affords the characters some personality and variety. But by Act 3, it sounds like even the voice actors gave up and are just going through the motions.

Thanks for the entertainment anyway, Larian. It was well worth taking a trip around this remarkable, flawed, inventive creation. And I’ll be glad of long break from it all as well!! Best of luck with your future projects. Cheers.

I get shock stuned with MA at 20% or less if shocking touch or point blank electric discharge hits both the target and a electrifiable surface. I have that kind of luck.



I do have to strugle a bit to proc Chilled on opponents I give you that,but Blind is one of the easier conditions to apply (dust spells,burning whip and blinding radiance) you just need to cast the spell when you know you can blast through the magic armour. Bleed doesn't need many representations due to the fact that RNG is very eager to give you weapons that proc it on auto attack (or at least it is generous to me about it?)Scoundrel and Necro have more than enough entries for this proc to keep me happy.

Get a staff and set of full plate (if that set gives bonuses to warfare and scoundrel you rock) and the whirlwind skill on your mage and put him on the front line. You will laugh at the number of targets you can CC with blind(ing radiance). I do agree that poison,burning and cursed representations are over represented in this game.

And again I am simply not feeling that restrained by the AP system,I actualy view it as a masive improvement over D:OS 1. I like the fact that I am limited and have to think really hard about how far I move and if I should attack this turn....this is what makes Arena Mode and Single Player fun for me.(I bought the game so I can mod arena mode -combat is a big thing for me in this game).

It's unfortunate that I found the most dull portion of the game to be the ending. Suddenly they drop Lucian out of no where, and Dallis is suddenly leaking exposition and explanations for her actions. I thought they were gonna make a big deal out of Lucian, but I barely had the dialogue option to say "Holy hell Lucian is alive and you are working for him?!" Let alone question how truthful the seemingly deceitful Dallis was. Braccus felt crammed in and the boss fight to follow was horrendously dull. The Kraken was cool looking, but did almost nothing besides mimic the Braccus Rex fight from the first game, just without any interesting mechanics and with FAR less climactic summons. And as a lone wolf my 2H friend 2 shot lucian without even using Onslaught and the fight just ended. My most notable gripe is that the God King didn't even make an appearance, and given the epilogue it seems like they are saving him for a DLC or something.



I am doing a second playthrough by myself on classic mode as Fane, with Ifan, Lohse, and Red Prince, and just today I got through the Alexander fight at the end of Fort Joy. I don't know what it was but that was actually a tough fight for me, almost more so than when my friend and I did it on tactician (which is also when we accidentally summoned a demon from the Braccus Rex helm at almost the worst possible moment). Any who, when the rain started and the music intensified, the feeling was epic. Add to it that I had to use several res scrolls during the fight, and that the drillworm appeared at a critical moment when I needed just a turn or two for respite and it all came together as an artistic masterpiece for me.

I suppose my posts keep coming back to boss battles, and I find that relates to what you said. Most of the boss battles blended together. Even acknowledging that most of my Act 2 and onwards experience is with two lone wolfs on classic, the fights were far too bland. This was made worse by source spells which relates to a disfunctional source system. Source vampirism has no genuine drawbacks besides being a moral jerk in some cases and combine that with the incredibly powerful source spells and all the unoriginal fights become inconveniences at best.

I have to agree that the oil slime fight was ingenious because even though my friend and I were feeling the power of being lonewolfs, we had no idea how to handle the fight (we were still too low level to have access to any big AOE source spells like lightning storm). It felt wonderful to realize that we had no idea what to expect, and that we would have to think on the fly.

I empathize with most of the rest of what you said, just wanted to point out where it really resonated with me.

first off all thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I relived so many thoughts of mine as I read this document.
I wish Larian would lose ten minutes of his time to read this document and seriously change this game to a masterpiece never seen before.

After more than 150 hours in this game I can only heavly agree with every single point OP mentionned.
I hope they will take this into account...this is the report that their comunity manager should bring to their meeting table.
I would also be very interested to see detailed the major issue around how you/the community think the Ability system could be redesigned (ability-non-scaling skills, imbalances, specialization uslessness etc.).

And then I can only wait for them to go through the list..

Don't forget how some schools don't benefit their skills. The entire necromancer school is this personified, and the Master skill is the only one that doesn't scale with its parent school. Totem of the Necromancer, the highest level necromancy spell, scales off summoning.

I believe in one of these observations (M.15, after checking) I specifically point out Necromancy as one of the Skills/builds that is a poorly supported option.


I apologize for a lack of updates or additional content, as working on my personal projects for the game has been a little disheartening, and I've been rather busy in meatspace this month.

Amazing article, I agree with pretty much every single point. I made my own discussion pointing out my first impressions, maybe you can get some useful thoughts out of it:

http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=638931&gonew=1

I'm loving the game and progressing just fine now, although I needed three restarts to properly set up my party and follow the specified path, otherwise I just hit a brick wall. But I'm amazed at the insane amounts of flaws it has, it's like if a completely different team from DOS:EE made it.

GreatGuardsman thank you for putting together that document. I haven't played through the entire game yet. Party is level 15, three source points, about 2/3rds through the second part of the game I think. Overall, I like the game a lot and I can already tell I'm going to play to the finish AND play again from the start. That said, I've often felt frustrated with combat in this game and your list contains about every reason why. I thought of starting a thread about it. Luckily I stumbled into this one before I did. I'll take this opportunity to support some of the points you mentioned. I don't agree with your whole list or don't have a strong opinion on some subjects but I recognize the vast majority of issues you mentioned.

In my own experience (point numbers from your list)
1. initiative. It took a while before I understood what happened to initiative and I still do not like this change.
3. Level scaling. Aside from items being antiques after 2 levels it leads to enemies one or 2 levels above yours having bloated stats which leads to you having to play everything in the exact order you're supposed to. Maybe that's what the designers intended?
7. AP I disagree with this one. As long as the game is balanced around having only 4 or 6 ap per turn that's fine.

Major flaws
12 Quest log. Only issue I had here so far is some lacking information. I resolved one of the many quests in my quest log, now I have to go back to Garvan. Hmm, Garvan.... where did I run into this guy? Check log: no info. Check town with 50 npc's. nope. I have to hope I'll accidentally run into him again.
17. Line of sight/pathing One of my major sources of frustration. Always shots I can't make and things I can't see. Highly infuriating the AI knows exactly where an npc needs to be placed to make the shot it wants. Solution: like in xcom 2 have icons/outlines appear on enemies as you move your cursor over the terrain to show which enemies will be visible/hitable from that position.
18. Cursed Terrain . Starting from the second half of the first island, every combat quickly devolved into chaotic cursed terrain. The minimap has often been a lifesaver. Without it, I couldn't find out where all the enemies were positioned in all the necrofire and cursed clouds and whatnot.
24. Better tooltips A must! Give accurate descriptions of what a skill/item does. How much? How far? What's the radius? etc...

I loved combat in DOS1. I am very disappointed in the combat in this game so far. It feels as if they tried to overstreamline the balance in the game. My experience has been that almost every battle is the same, whether they are humanoids, animals or monsters. Exceptions have been scarce.
I fight a group of 4 to 6 creatures or less than 4 but guaranteed they summon/call/unburrow extras when combat starts to end up with 4 to 6 foes.
2 or 3 of them (animals included) have teleporting abilities. (throw tactical positioning out of the window)
Most of them are spellcasters (yes animals too).
Even if they are all the same creature, one of them will have no or low phys armour but high magic armour, one will have it the other way around, others have an equal balance of both.

Then add the issues previously mentioned on top of that and battles have been mainly annoying/repetitive.

Also every enemie type has the same smartness, so in general you are fighting the same enemies all the time. Only their appearance is kind of left to make a difference.


Regarding AP:
There are to many skills that give you AP on use or make you reset all cooldowns/make a follow up turn.

I think somebody figured out a way to use 14 AP or something about that number in 'one turn', which will make you pretty much broken if used.

Also somebody once mentioned, that AI always seems to starts with AP advantage.

IMO the entire new combat system is a mistake. DOSEE combat with some balance patch addressing chain-cc issues would be good enough.

The new combat system takes them too much time and probably leads to a buggy release.

Case in point: unexpected path interruptions and cursed terrain chaos.
Something invisible in mid air obstructs the arrows path from my archer to the advocate.
Also, try finding the advocate and his associate who's been knocked down on the ground lying 1 m away from him.
[img]https://ibb.co/cHamC6[/img]

Nice reading and a nicely written critic by OP. Then I agree with this post but the main issue here seems to be crafting is underdeveloped/useless. No way to craft armor/weapons with custom properties, even if it would requiere expensive or hard to get ingredients. The only use I make off crafting for me is spending all those crappy ingredients for economic purposes (selling everything I created).

As long as you can't craft items of divine value, crafting will be always underwhelming because all that matters are numbers in this game. Also flat numbers will be always pretty weak in a game like this. Skills need to give percentual boost to have a lasting value into the end game.

All this aside, let me just voice one complaint (or technically two): why did Ice King and Demon make it into the game unaltered? Literally. Useless. Traits.

One of many things that they did not bother to rework and improve for this game, so that they still keep the game down.